And besides my bad mood due to the lack of sleep, I was also super pissed that morning for two main reasons: 1) Klere was coming up from Los Angeles that day to discuss her role as “muse.” We would have to spend the day together and do a night out, for the second time, and really, once had been enough for me. In addition, she hadn’t decided if she wanted to stay for the weekend or not, but Pascale was pushing me to get a yes on that. “A Weekend at Play in the City by the Bay…think of all the things Klere could do, wearing our line,” my boss considered aloud, then nodded in my direction. “Get it locked down,” she told me.
The bigger reason for my mood was that 2) Nate was a jerk. A thoughtless, careless jerk. The night before, when I had gotten home from work, Joey and Pia had been there alone. No Nate. No one had mentioned any other plans to me, no one had said anything about not being there. The four of us had been hanging out together at night when I got home, mostly me working while Joey and Nate shot the breeze or played cards or backgammon with an old set Joey had dragged with him from Hawaii, with weird sports playing in the background. That was what we did, that was what we were developing as our routine.
“Where’s everybody else?” I had asked when I came in the night before, trying to be vague as I bent to pet Pia hello. That was another part of the routine, how she ran up to greet me when I got there.
“You mean everybody else, like Nate?” Joey asked. “He went out with that woman from before, Ashley, the medic we knew. She’s been, uh, eager to see him again.” He bent to pet Pia also. “I’m making dinner. Come here and help me with the salad,” he told me. “This time, you’re going to put dressing on it. No more naked lettuce.” Joey had laughed, because he was finally feeling better. It had taken a few days for him to bounce back, which told me a lot more about how hard his life had to have been. I couldn’t imagine living with the fear that this would happen, your body and brain would sort of turn on you, and then to have to suffer the after-effects…it made me furious that no one had been able to solve this problem! And then to think of Nate leaving him just to go out and get laid? It pissed me off to no end. That was why I was so angry. It was terrible treatment of his friend, as simple as that.
I was still angry about it the next morning, and now even crankier from being tired and not looking forward to a day and night with Klere. And at this moment, when Nate joked about me going incognito when all I was trying to do was hide all my ugliness, I wanted to hit him. Instead, I turned and went down the hall and smashed my fist on the button for the elevator.
He was right behind me. “Let’s take the stairs,” he suggested.
“Fine,” I snapped, because apparently my run had become a group activity. He held the door for me and I pounded down. I hated the stairwell because there weren’t enough lights. It wasn’t safe in there, and I never went by myself. I took a big breath when we got out to the sidewalk and then broke immediately into a run.
Nate kept up so I ran faster. Then faster, then faster, until my legs were pounding so hard that I was almost wobbling. I kept going until he put his hand on my arm and it made me stumble. “Slow down,” he ordered, and held me up so that I didn’t fall. “Slow down, right now. What in the hell are you doing?”
“This is how I run,” I told him. “If you don’t like it, go off with someone else.” He could run with Ashley the medic. But I did slow down, until I was moving more at my normal pace, which was still fast enough to make it hurt. He kept up, moving right next to me. I ran and ran, turning around at the Exploratorium to make five miles.
We had gone mostly in silence until the turnaround, then Nate spoke. “Can you talk or are you too winded?” He was barely breathing hard.
“I’m fine,” I announced. “Did you have something to say?”
“Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?” he answered.
“No!” Because I didn’t think I had ever been to sleep. “I was just very worried last night. Very worried. You came here to take care of Joey, and the minute there’s fresh meat in your future, you leave him and go sniffing after it.”
“Fresh meat? What does that mean?”
“You know what I mean!” I exploded. “A piece of ass!”
He stared at me. “Are you talking about me going out with Ashley last night?”
“Whatever,” I told him. “I’m surprised you would treat us—I mean, treat him like that.”
“Joey had you there, didn’t he?”
“I was at work until late. Some people have to work.”
“Oh, do they?” he asked. “Remember that I know a little about your family. I don’t think that last statement is true.” When I started to snap back at him, he continued, but louder. “Joey was fine. I was a phone call away. Was that what you were actually worried about or was there something else?”
“What else would I be worried about?” I looked over at him quickly behind my sunglasses. His face told me nothing about what he knew was really in my mind. I flipped my gaze forward and brushed a strand of hair off of my mouth with impatient fingers.
Nate was staring at that hand. “Wait a minute.” He grabbed my right arm again and pulled me to a stop. “What in the fuck is on your hand?” he demanded.
My sleeve had covered my hand until now, when he yanked the fabric up to expose what I was wearing and I tried to jerk my arm away from his grasp.
“Scarlett, no.” He peeled open my fingers and slid the brass knuckles off. “You can’t go around with these. I looked it up, and they are illegal here.” He pocketed my weapon.
“No one can see them. I need those back!” I reached for his pocket but he stopped me.
“No. Keep running.” Still holding my hand and with my stolen brass knuckles secured in his shorts, he started off again and pulled me along with him. “You’re that afraid,” he stated.
“I’m not afraid!” I took another few steps before I continued. “I’m not afraid, but I’m not stupid. I’m out here on my own and no one would give a shit if I got grabbed, attacked, hurt, whatever. I have to be able to defend myself.”
“There are things you can do…”
“Self-defense classes? Martial arts?” I laughed, breathlessly. “Yeah, right. I’ve done all that and I know that if some man wanted to hurt me, he could. I won’t let it happen. You’ll give those back to me when we get to my apartment.”
“We’ll continue our conversation,” he told me, and I wanted to scream.
Instead, I forced it down and ran faster. “I’ll just get more,” I dismissed him over my shoulder. My feet rammed into the sidewalk. It needed to hurt.
Again, Nate kept right up. “What the hell’s the matter with you? You’re this upset that I went out with someone?”
“Of course not! I just want my property back. I couldn’t care less about you or your women.”
He actually snorted. “My women. Sure. What happened to you yesterday? Did you have a bad day at work?”
The fucking worst. I’d had to be in contact with Klere for hours, strings of reminders about her upcoming trip and what she would be doing here, mixed with meaningless compliments from me about her clothes, her followers, and her looks in order to hold her interest. My messages got answered with extremely vague responses and non sequiturs, punctuated with questions like, “Are you the one from New Australia?” What in the hell was New Australia? I had looked it up and it was a failed 19th century commune in Paraguay. When she got on the plane later today, where did she think it was going to take her?
“No,” I had written back to Klere. “I’m still in San Francisco, not Australia (old or new).” Then I had added, “California,” and wondered if I should also put “USA” or if that would have confused her more. And the whole time I was managing her, I was also dealing with more B-list actors on major ego trips, a buyer from New York with serious coastal superiority issues, and my boss, who had decided to take part of the office out on a mid-week yoga retreat (in a week that was already shortened by the holiday on Monday) and ca
lled me in the middle of a class to discuss work, grunting and moaning into the phone as she got herself into hummingbird pose. It had been enough to turn my stomach.
“I had a great day at work yesterday,” I told Nate, holding my chin up high.
“You’re going to trip if you keep your nose in the air.”
I lowered it slightly because he had a point. “I was very productive and accomplished a lot.” Sure, if you considered that persuading a woman in New York that crushed velvet really was making a comeback was an accomplishment.
“Your job doesn’t make sense to me,” Nate told me.
He had said that before, too. “What doesn’t make sense? I do public relations stuff to make our clothing line more popular so that more people will want to buy it. It’s pretty straightforward.”
“No, the part that doesn’t make sense is you doing it. You, Scarlett O’Hara Wolfe. The woman who tells me to fuck off at least once a day.”
“That’s not true. I usually only think it.”
He smiled at me. “Exactly. I know when you’re thinking it. I can’t understand you doing this job.”
“Why?”
“When you talk about it, it’s obvious that you don’t like it. It seems like you have to kiss a lot of ass. I just can’t see that working for you, such as you are,” he explained.
“I don’t kiss ass! Fuck off.”
“Exactly.” Nate looked at me for a moment before returning his eyes to the sidewalk ahead of us. “It doesn’t seem like the job for you.”
“What would be? Mercenary? Prison guard? Arms dealer?” I asked, and he laughed, which made my already-pounding heart do a little flip. He didn’t laugh too much and there was just something about the sound of it. “Do you think your job is right for you?” I asked.
“My job is just right for me,” he told me. “I like it a lot. Not dealing with the bitchy clients, not that part.” He looked at me again pointedly before turning his eyes back to the sidewalk. “I love being able to fix things. I keep everything going, keep it all up. I was tired of seeing things broken and hurt.”
“That’s so profound,” I said.
“It’s also so true. Yeah, I think my job is right for me. What about you?”
“It’s something to do and it makes sense for me. I always loved fashion and clothes. I convince people to buy our shit, I’m good at it. And I’m about as deep as a puddle, right? It’s the perfect line of work for someone like me.” I looked down at my phone to check my pace. I needed more. “I’m going to run for real,” I told him, and took off again, making my lungs burn and my muscles flame until I was almost crying with the pain of it. Nate kept up but he was panting too by the time we got back to my building. I folded my arms and put my forehead on them, resting against the wall. My ribs heaved and my legs were jelly. There. That was what it should feel like. Like a punishment.
Nate leaned his back against the building next to me, and took one of my hands. I picked up my head and watched him put the brass knuckles into my palm, folding my fingers around them. “I’ll run with you tomorrow morning. You won’t need these,” he said.
I nodded, still unable to speak. A bullet of pain seared through my ribs and I smacked at it with my fist. There you go, Scarlett. Take that.
Nate picked up that hand, too, so he was holding both of mine. “Can you tell me now?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Can you?” he repeated.
I yanked my hands from his. “Thanks for returning my property,” I said. “Next time you want something from me, ask.”
“I just did,” he said. He held the door for me, but when we went inside, I declined to go up the stairs with him. I waited for the elevator and took some more deep breaths.
I got dressed carefully, considering each detail of my outfit, just in case Klere looked at soothing other than herself in every reflective surface around her. I heard a funny screeching noise as I finished my makeup. “What was that sound?” I asked, coming out of the bedroom.
Joey was lying back on the couch for his meal, enjoying breakfast like he was in the Roman Empire, but Nate was… “What are you doing?” I asked him curiously.
“I’m ironing,” he explained. He shook out a shirt and laid it out in front of him, then moved the sliver contraption back and forth. He looked up at me. “Have you seriously never seen someone iron before? The sound you heard was me setting up the board.”
I was staring at him hard, but it was mostly because he wasn’t wearing the shirt yet, just jeans. My eyes slid over the indentations between muscle and hipbone, the dark hair on his chest. I could lick…I looked up into his eyes. “Did I have those things in my house?”
“No. You had a mound of dirty laundry, instead.”
I looked by the door. I hadn’t even noticed that my Mount Shasta-sized pile of dry cleaning was gone. “What happened to my clothes?” I demanded.
“I brought it all to the cleaners. It was hard to walk into the house with it there. I also thought it might fall on Pia.”
“Oh,” I answered, and he held the iron, watching me and waiting. “Thank you,” I said, and scowled.
Nate shook his head, but a ghost of a smile came to his lips. “Always gracious. You’re welcome, Scarlett. I went through your mail, too. That was what was worth keeping.” He pointed to a small pile in a rubber band on the coffee table I had bought.
I had been throwing it all in the corner for months, when I remembered to pry it out of my stuffed mailbox in the lobby. “Thank you,” I repeated. I watched him expertly flip the shirt, concentrating. How long would he be able to hold onto that creamy brown skin in the fog of San Francisco? I thought about touching it, about the pads of my fingers lightly brushing over his collarbones and his throat with the peppery stubble that he hadn’t shaved, the scars on his arm and his ribs, and the marks around his eye. I could kiss…
“Scarlett? Did you hear me?” Joey asked.
I forced my eyes onto him. “What?”
He held up his mug. “There’s coffee in the kitchen if you want some.”
“And since you didn’t make it, we’re both enjoying it,” Nate added.
I gave him the finger and went for a cup. “Why are you ironing?” I called from the kitchen. I quickly poured out a mug from the new set I had bought and came back into the living room, before he finished the project and got dressed.
“I have a job interview.”
“Really?” I watched the muscles in his back ripple as he pulled on the shirt. “I thought you just finished telling me that you love your job in Hawaii.”
“I do. But I’m going to find something temporary here.”
“Jedi, fuck,” Joey exploded. “Why don’t you just go home?”
“Stow it, Joey.” Nate finished the buttons and tucked the shirt into his jeans, his hands moving below his waistband. I watched them. “Scarlett?”
“What?” I asked again.
“I’ll walk you out.” We waved goodbye to Joey and Pia, who hadn’t really woken up yet.
“Why are you getting a job?” I asked as we waited for the elevator. “What about being with Joey?”
“I need to have some more money coming in,” he explained, and I felt stupid. That was why people usually got jobs. “This will be part-time, nights, if I get it. They need someone right away. Just for a little while until we go home.”
“Doing what?”
“Security. I’m good at it.” He waited for me as the doors opened and I looked around the garage carefully, out of habit.
But it was true; I did feel more secure when he was around. I could just walk right up to my car and not worry. “I’ll drive you,” I said.
He shook his head. “No, thanks, I want to walk. Where’s your office?”
I pointed in the direction of where I thought the Mission was, but it was hard to tell underground. “That way. I could walk, too, in theory.” I looked down at my feet in the beautiful, yet impractical shoes. “But I can�
��t.”
“You could if I broke those heels off for you,” he suggested. He eyed them.
“Don’t you dare touch them. I love these shoes and even without the heels I couldn’t walk in them. They aren’t made for moving.” They hurt just standing, in fact, but that was what beauty was. I unlocked my car and got in, but then stopped. “Um, good luck at your interview.”
“Thank you.”
“You could tell me if you got it.”
He nodded. “I may not hear right away, but I’ll let you know.”
For some reason, I didn’t want to go. “Are you sure you don’t want a ride?”
Now he shook his head. “You’re going to be late.” I looked at my phone and he was right, and I also had a bunch of notifications from my boss. He shut the door and I drove away fast, almost brushing the concrete column as I backed up because I was still watching him, in the shirt he had ironed so carefully, and his dark eyes that were watching me, too.
Pascale was in a bit of a frenzy when I got to the office. I had just updated our press kit and she was not happy with some of the changes. She’d heard that the showroom we contracted with in New York might be going out of business. Klere was coming.
First things first. Pascale looked at my outfit, drawn entirely from our line’s spring and summer collections. She nodded approvingly. “I wouldn’t have thought of mixing those pieces, not at all. But I like it.” She picked up my necklace and studied the onyx pendant that my mom had given me. “Very nice.”
“Thank you,” I said, for the third time that morning. I thought of Nate in his plain white shirt and basic jeans. He and I had different uniforms. I got to work on revising the press kit, again, until it was time for me to meet Klere for lunch. She had said she needed to catch up with a friend before coming to the restaurant. I had some misgivings about that, having met her friends the previous time she had visited. They were all what one might call assholes.
Lovely You Page 11
